The staff at the Xinchen Hotel

Donut shop. Yum.

Mountain Monastery

Me

Inside. This is some detail from one of those scary guys the Buddhists put at doorways to frighten the evil spirits away. There were two giant scary statues, I got this detail of one of them before I was told I couldn't take photos.

Painting over old window.

View from hilltop reveals Hohhot, not the best side of it.

Window painting.

This pile of rocks with three pronged fork on top is a Buddhist symbol of some sort. G told me that on certain days people flock here to pray for good luck.

The Xinchen Hotel had never had a request to use their fax line for a laptop computer. Why not use the regular line, they asked. Well... I tried to explain the digital line/analog line thing, that their regular telephone line could damage my modem, but it didn't make any sense to them. A phone line was a phone line was a phone line, but okay, the Mei guo gal with the high-tech laptop and the hands of a motorcycle mechanic could have the fax line if she really wanted it, rather amusing, really, but how should she be charged if she wasn't actually using the fax machine? Well, I said, in Datong they charged me the long distance phone rate to Beijing, plus 10 yuan for the use of the fax line. Okay, they said, taking my word for it. Now, how many big hotels in America would agree to something like that? I guess I'm setting a precedent for charges all over China, so I hope that 10 yuan is agreeable on both sides.

It took forever to get a good connection to Beijing, and whole time I was sending the dispatches and sending a receiving and reading and and answering business and personal e-mail I had three or more people looking over my shoulder. Only one could actually read what was on the screen (the woman in the center in the photo at left) and she didn't feel that she was invading my privacy by practicing her English by reading love letters from my boyfriend. (Sigh. Another e-mail romance.) But there is no privacy in China. People will race up to me in the street to stare. They will peek under the sidecar cover when I park, work the clutch and the brake, push the fenders to check the suspension, even get on the bike and pretend to ride it. They'll sit on it if they need to rest, putting their feet on the air hose (I hate that) and when I get my mileage log out they'll put their faces practically inside my bag to see what's in there, AND they'll report to the rest of the crowd if they've discovered anything interesting.

It's irritating until you realize that they have just never seen a foreigner up close before in their entire life, and that they think it's just great that it's a woman riding a Chinese motorcycle from Beijing all the way to hear. While they're standing there staring they'll look mad, confused, dumb, or crazy, but if you smile at them they'll smile back and give you a thumbs up, and you feel like a grump for having been so negative.

Most of the time, though, it's a real relief to get into the hotel room and lock the door.

But I was going to tell you about my day. So, dear friends, I had a very interesting day today. It took me forever to get my cyberspace business done, and then I wanted to go to the monastery to say goodbye to my new Tibetan monk friend. I stopped to get some fresh donuts and was waylaid by a bunch of kids who peeked inside the trunk when I unlocked it. One of them jumped back and said something to the others, and all their eyes got big and they looked scared and kind of in awe. I had never seen such real fear, and I didn't understand until one of them, a little fat bold one, stepped forward and asked "do you really have a gun in there?" (Now don't ask me how I know he said that because you know that body language and some uninhibited psychic communication and just paying attention can get you a long way).

I thought about giving them a big thrill and nodding yes, but then I didn't want to perpetuated the stereotype that all Americans carry guns and go around shooting one another all the time just for the fun of it, so I said no way and showed them that it was only the end of the sledgehammer. Then I jumped at them and said "bang bang" really loud. They didn't understand. Maybe they have a different word for "bang" in Chinese.

By then it was already noon, so I grabbed some dumplings and rode to the monastery to say goodbye, but G convinced me to ride him to a temple about 10 miles away in the mountains, and I could spend the night at the monastery that night. Okay, I said, because I have never spent the night in a monastery and because it was already going to be dark by the time I got to Baotou, which was only half way to Dongsheng and the guidebook said Baotou was a horrible industrial city and I just hate that. So G changed out of his brown robe and we were off.

If G is any indication, monks have a terrible sense of direction. I normally like to defer to people who have lived in a place I have only visited for a day, but he'd only been there a month and he doesn't drive, so even though we stopped for directions six times it took an hour and a half to get there, most of it motocrossing through small villages, herds of sheep, creeks, and dry riverbeds.

G laughed all the way and so did I. We were in no hurry, after all, so when we were completely lost and totally alone in the mountains, (which is hard to do in China), we sat down for a rest and so he could have a smoke.

It was his only vice. The day before he had told me, with a hint of disapproval in his voice, that Mongolian monks smoked and drank and had wives. Tibetan monks didn't drink and didn't have wives, but G smoked incessantly. I joked with him that he was on his way to ruin, when he got tired of smoking he would have to start drinking and then for sure he would have to have a wife. He would laugh at this, crinkling up his nose and his eyes would disappear into little half circles like Santa, only G is a skinny Tibetan guy with a flat face and a shaved head.

We were sitting on the mountaintop and he laughed at this again, and then he lunged at me in an obviously unpracticed attempt at romantic coercion, a kind of half football tackle with the face.

Horrified, I wrestled him off of me. Not a difficult maneuver since he's about 5"5' to my 5"8', and I probably outweigh him by 30 pounds.

"Kiss!" he said.

You have got to be kidding.

"Do that again and I am going to be very angry." I told him, like a little kid who has just run into the street or something.

"Angry?"

"VERY angry."

He looked off into the mountains, sighed, and said "Okay. I try."

Geez. I had this impression that monks were these superior, unhumanlike beings, but, as my sister says, "men are just men are just men." (She's cynical like that, sometimes.)

It kind of put a damper on the day. I was thinking about what he might expect at the monastery that night, and I was kind of stuck, because I for sure couldn't go to Dongsheng or even Baotau that night, and I hated the thought of re-entering the hotel that I had just exited with such aplomb.

"Listen," I said. "No more kissing, or I must go to Baotau."

"No kissing."

"I don't sleep with you tonight."

"You go?"

"I go."

There was a long silence, and he said "You sleep with L--."

L slept in the front room, next to the street, and he was a tall, shy monk and the carpets were on a heated platform way far from each other. So I said okay. Besides, the 11th incarnation of the Buddha lived there. I met him that day, he used to like motorcycles, he said, until four or five years ago, and then the noise started to make him crazy. I liked him. He walked around like a normal guy, in slacks and a zip-up sweatshirt with stripes down the sleeves. Kind of a fat, good-natured kind of guy. His name is (phonetically) Rambushan, and he said he liked that I was traveling around like this, that I would have a big heart for doing it.

I kind of know what he meant, and appreciated it.

So I figured that if the monks misbehaved that the 11th incarnation of Buddha would at least interfere. Besides, I trusted L, and the other monk there was an elfin guy with a perpetual smile and a beeper.

"Why does a monk need a beeper," I asked G. But he couldn't tell me. I think though, that he was the assistant of Rambushan, and that the 11th incarnation of Buddha must have a lot of communicating to do and would need an assistant to help him handle it.

We finally found the monastery, which I thought was very nice being in the mountains, and having never been to Tibet or Southeast Asia or anywhere else you see humongous perfect monasteries, so I walked around in awe as G lit incense and bowed at all the Buddhas, in one room there were nine of them, and two of those scary guys at the door.

Then we walked up the hill by the pile of rocks and looked out at Hohhot, which from here looked like an ugly city with smokestacks. Had I not been there I would have had a bad impression, but it's a clean, vibrant city with friendly people, and I would go there again.

G smoked and I rested. Riding a motorcycle in China is hard work, especially one of the sidecar bikes, it's heavy and after motocrossing with G on the back I was tired, he had no idea how exhausting it might be. But then I've never walked from Lhasa to the border of India.

From my journal:

Right now the monks are preparing dinner. They have both cleaned the whole place spotless, wiping down every surface, and washing their hands thoroughly. G makes noodle dough by kneading flour and water in a large basin, and how he is breaking the ends of cilanro and some leafy green vegetable I recognize dbut can't place -- fresh spring leaves that gow in bunches, kind of triangular heart shaped. L is chopping cucumbers and tomatoes with a huge sharp clear outside the room in the courtyard of the monestary. L is a tall thin Tibetan who is very neat. His clothing is always clean and pressed -- that is, other than his raggedy brown monk's robe. Now he is wearing navy slacks carefully creased and a white cotton turtleneck, of all things. The navy jacket he was wearing earlier is folded carefully inside-out and placed on the sleeping platform which makes up fully one half of this room.

The TV is on. There was just an ad featuring a group of young people bowling. They guy bowls, it's going straight down the alleyway, then it suddenly verers off into the gutter. All the girls in the group look away form him like he's the biggest dork they've eer seen, THEN, a can of beer flashes up on the screen with hip music. The beer is called VALOR. The guy sips it, throws his ball again, and of course he gets a strike. The girls look at him adoringly.

Back to dinner. L has very neatly chopped the veggies on a large wooden chopping board. G is sweeping up the excess (any trash from anything goes on the floor), and now L is changing channels on the TV and G has taken over the chopping task. The other half of the room is for furniture. There is a cabinert with two large doors in the middle and 3 drawers where the food, utensils, bowls, and miscelanous stuff is kept. Glassware sits on top by the TV with some more bowls and there is a clock ticking above it, sort of a cukoo clock without the cukoo, and a mirror, and a calendar from last year with a photo of ocean and blue sky. A short bench by the door holds three big green plastic thermoses of hot water. There is a metal chair beside that with a padded seat. And two more chairs sit on each side of a small high table.

Outside, a metal pot of water is always cooking on a tiny potbellied coal-fed stove. It is sometiems brought inside to cook on the stove that also heats the sleeping platform, a hollow cement box on top of which sits the ubiqtious short red carpet. A short table sits in the center of the sleeping platform, and separates two long rugs for sleeping on. The sheet and blanket are rolled up neatly against the wall, the blanket is about an inch think and very heavy, very warm.

The whole room is cement. Halfway up the wall are windows all around, about 1.5 feet tall, and then more wall and ceiling. I feel very lazy because the monks won't let me lift a finger. I watch as they bring a big wok of water to a boil, add the vegetables and then the cut the noodles into it in small chunks, cover it, let it simmer and then add soy sauce and salt, always too much salt here. The three of us eat, they slurp loudly and correct the way I hold my chopsticks. They finish, light cigarettes and I continue to eat, too dantily, picking at the tomotoe and cucbumber slices covered in cilantro and sugar, while they watch a television show about a woman who has been unfaithful to her husband, she cries and opens her shirt, confessing her wrongdoing by showing him a big hickey on her neck. I burst out laughing, it is the hokiest thing I have ever seen, but the monks are enthralled. This is so unlike their life, what a drama, women and hickeys and large luxurious homes and servants. yeeks. What must they think?

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